Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong ... · PDF fileWe conducted our...
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REPORT INTO ALLEGATIONS OF ORGAN HARVESTING OF FALUN GONG PRACTITIONERS IN CHINA by David Matas and David Kilgour 6 July 2006 http://OrganHarvestInvestigation.net http://investigation.go.saveinter.net
Transcript of Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong ... · PDF fileWe conducted our...
REPORT INTO ALLEGATIONS OF ORGAN
HARVESTING OF FALUN GONG PRACTITIONERS IN
CHINA
by David Matas and David Kilgour
6 July 2006
http://OrganHarvestInvestigation.net
http://investigation.go.saveinter.net
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Table of Contents
A. Introduction
B. Working Methods
C. The Allegation
D. Difficulties of Proof
E. Methods of Proof
F. Elements of Proof and Disproof
1) A perceived threat
2) A policy of persecution
3) Incitement to hatred
4) Massive Arrests
5) Repression
6) The unidentified and the disappeared
7) Sources of transplants
8) Blood testing
9) Corpses with missing organs
10) A confession
11) Admissions
12) Waiting times
13) Incriminating Information on Websites
14) Victim interviews
15) Human rights violations generally
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16) Financial Considerations
17) Corruption
18) Legislation
G. Credibility
H. Further investigation
I. Conclusions
J. Recommendations
K. Commentary
L. Appendices
1) Letter of invitation from CIPFG
2) Biography of David Matas
3) Biography of David Kilgour
4) People interviewed
5) Letter to the Chinese embassy
6) Statements by the Government of China on Falun Gong
7) Physical persecution of the Falun Gong
8) Blood testing of Falun Gong prisoners
9) Unidentified Falun Gong in detention
10) Disappearances
11) AI’s Records of Number of Executed Prisoners in China Each Year
12) Corpses with missing organs
13) Transcript of Interview
14) Transcripts of telephone investigations
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A. Introduction
The Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of the Falun Gong in China (CIPFG), a non-
governmental organization registered in Washington, D.C. with a branch in Ottawa,
Canada, by letter dated May 24, 2006 asked for our assistance in investigating
allegations that state institutions and employees of the government of People's
Republic of China have been harvesting organs from live Falun Gong practitioners,
killing the practitioners in the process. The request letter is attached as an appendix
to this report. Many of the friends of China, including us two, are concerned about
these allegations. In light of their seriousness, as well as our own commitment
respecting human dignity world wide, we accepted the request.
David Matas is an immigration, refugee and international human rights lawyer in private
practice in Winnipeg. He is actively involved in the promotion of respect for human
rights as an author, speaker and participant in several human rights non-governmental
organizations.
David Kilgour is a former member of Parliament and a former Secretary of State of the
Government of Canada for the Asia Pacific region. Before he became a
Parliamentarian, he was a Crown prosecutor. The biographies of both authors are
attached as appendices to this report.
B. Working Methods
We conducted our investigation independently from the CIPFG, the Falun Dafa
Association, any other organization, and any government. We sought to go to China
unsuccessfully, but would be willing to go even subsequently to pursue a second stage
of the investigation if access to witnesses and institutions can be obtained. We
interviewed a number of different people listed in an appendix to this report as well as
read extensively any information we could obtain relevant to our report. We were not
paid by anyone for this report but rather did this work as volunteers.
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C. The Allegation
It is alleged that Falun Gong practitioners are victims of live organ harvesting
throughout China. The allegation is that organ harvesting is inflicted on unwilling
Falun Gong practitioners at a wide variety of locations, pursuant to a systematic policy,
in large numbers.
Organ harvesting is a step in organ transplants. The purpose of organ harvesting is to
provide organs for transplants. Transplants do not necessarily have to take place in
the same place as the location of the organ harvesting. The two locations are often
different, organs harvested in one place are shipped to another place for transplanting.
The allegation is further that the organs are harvested from the practitioners while they
are still alive. The practitioners are killed in the course of the organ harvesting
operations or immediately thereafter. These operations are a form of murder.
Finally, we are told that the practitioners killed in this way are then cremated. There is
no corpse left to examine to identify as the source of an organ transplant.
The thought of such a practice occurring, particularly if it might be at the direction of a
government, at the beginning of the 21st century when the value of individual human
life is finally gaining more widespread respect, is most alarming. Accordingly, when one
of the first in camera witnesses, a woman who is not a Falun Gong practitioner, met in
the course of this inquiry said that her surgeon husband told her that he personally
removed the corneas from approximately 2000 anaesthetized Falun Gong prisoners in
northeast China during the two year period before October, 2003 ( at which time he
refused to continue), we were shaken. Much of what we have encountered since, as
outlined in this report, has been almost equally disturbing.
D. Difficulties of Proof
The allegations, by their very nature, are difficult either to prove or disprove. The best
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evidence for proving any allegation is eye witness evidence. Yet for this alleged crime,
there is unlikely to be any eye witness evidence.
The people present at the scene of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners, if it
does occur, are either perpetrators or victims. There are no bystanders. Because the
victims, according to, the allegation are murdered and cremated, there is no body to be
found, no autopsy to be conducted. There are no surviving victims to tell what
happened to them. Perpetrators are unlikely to confess to what would be, if they
occurred, crimes against humanity. Nonetheless, though we did not get full scale
confessions, we garnered a surprising number of admissions through investigator
phone calls.
The scene of the crime, if the crime has occurred, leaves no traces. Once an organ
harvesting is completed, the operating room in which it takes place looks like any other
empty operating room.
The clampdown on human rights reporting in China makes assessment of the
allegations difficult. China, regrettably, represses human rights reporters and
defenders. There is no freedom of expression. Those reporting on human rights
violations from within China are often jailed and sometimes charged with
communicating state secrets. In this context, the silence of human rights
non-governmental organizations on organ harvesting of unwilling Falun Gong
practitioners tells us nothing.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is not allowed to visit prisoners in China.
Nor is any other organization concerned with human rights of prisoners. That also
cuts off a potential avenue of evidence.
China has no access to information legislation. It is impossible to get from the
Government of China basic information about organ transplants - how many transplants
there are, what is the source of the organs, how much is paid for transplants or where
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that money is spent.
We did seek to visit China for this report. Our efforts went nowhere. We asked in
writing for a meeting with the embassy to discuss terms of entry. Our letter is
attached as an appendix to this report. Our request for a meeting was accepted. But
the person who met with David Kilgour was interested only in denying the allegations
and not in arranging for our visit.
E. Methods of Proof
We have had to look at a number of factors, to determine whether they present a
picture, all together, which make the allegations either true or untrue. None of these
elements on its own either establishes or disproves the allegations. Together, they
paint a picture.
Many of the pieces of evidence we considered, in themselves, do not constitute ironclad
proof of the allegation. But their non-existence might well have constituted disproof.
The combination of these factors, particularly when there are so many of them, has the
effect of making the allegations believable, even when any one of them in isolation
might not do so. Where every possible element of disproof we could identify fails to
disprove the allegations, the likelihood of the allegations being true becomes
substantial.
Proof can be either inductive or deductive. Criminal investigation normally works
deductively, stringing together individual pieces of evidence into a coherent whole.
The limitations our investigation faced placed severe constraints in this deductive
method. Some elements from which we could deduce what was happening were,
nonetheless, available, in particular, the investigator phone calls.
We also used inductive reasoning, working backwards as well as forwards. If the
allegations were not true, how would we know it was not true? If the allegations were
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true, what facts would be consistent with those allegations? What would explain the
reality of the allegations, if the allegations were real? Answers to those sorts of
questions which helped us to form our conclusions.
F. Elements of Proof and Disproof
We considered any and all elements of proof and disproof which were available and
which might be available. Some evidentiary trails went nowhere. But we attempted to
follow them nonetheless.
1) Perceived threat
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to see Falun Gong as a threat to its
monopoly of ideological power over China in the late 1990s. This perceived threat does
not prove the allegations. Yet, if the Falun Gong were not seen as a threat to the
power of the CCP, the allegations would be undermined.
Falun Gong was founded in north eastern China in 1992 by Li Hongzhi. In the 1980s, Li
began practising qigong, a centuries-old system of breathing exercises - occasionally
referred to as "Chinese yoga" - which was thought to improve health and spiritual
sensitivity. Qigong in all its variations was suppressed across the country in 1949 after
the CCP seized office in Beijing, but the police state environment had become less
oppressive by the 1980s for qigong in all forms, including Falun Gong.
Falun Gong had at the time only recently been developed by Li and included elements
of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. In essence, it teaches methods of meditation
through exercises intended to improve physical and spiritual health and fitness. The
movement is not political and it followers seek to promote truth, tolerance and
compassion across racial, national and cultural boundaries. Violence is anathema to
Falun Gong adherents. Li registered his movement with the government's Qigong
Research Association and by the mid-nineties claimed to have approximately 60 million
practitioners. The Chinese Government's sports department itself estimated that there
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were 70 million adherents in 1999.
According to Professor Maria Hsia Chang's book, Falun Gong, published by Yale
University in 2004,
"Reportedly, the middle-aged and those from the middle class comprised (Falun
Gong's) main following, although its ranks also included students and the elderly,
as well as peasants. They came from all walks of life: teachers, physicians,
soldiers, CCP cadres, diplomats posted in foreign countries, and other
government officials. More than that, it was reported that among the followers of
Master Li were the spouses and family members of some of China's top officials,
including President Jiang, Premier Zhu and officials of the State Council, the
executive branch of government." 1
Falun Gong was part of the explosion of religious activity that appeared in China since
the 1980s as "part of China's post-Mao 'spiritual vacuum' and the scaling back of the
Party's ideological control of society..." 2 The popular appeal of Falun Gong in
particular was based in part on its commitment to integrate modern science with
Chinese traditions.
Before Falun Gong was banned in July, 1999, its adherents gathered regularly in
China's myriad cities to do their exercises. As Chang notes, in Beijing alone there were
more than 2000 practice stations. China's Premier Zhu for one, she adds, appeared to
be pleased with the rising popularity of Li's movement because its positive social
consequences included reducing medical costs for practitioners, who were often
healthy. President Jiang himself was reported to have taken up qigong in 1992 by
inviting a member of Zhong Gong, a group which then claimed 38 million members, to
treat him for arthritis and neck pains (By early 2000, however, Jiang's government
banned Zhong Gong as an "evil sect" and drove its leader out of China.).1
1 Professor Maria Hsia Chang’s book, Falun Gong, published by Yale University, 2004 2 “Falun Gong and Canada’s China policy”. David Ownby, vol. 56, International Journal, Canadian Institute of International Affairs, Spring 2001.
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Jiang's personal confrontation with Falun Gong had begun to develop in 1996, Chang
and many other observers conclude, when Li's book, Rotating the Law Wheel, sold
almost a million copies across China. This alerted nervous party leaders, including
Jiang, to the growing popularity of the movement. Fearing the possibility of political
revolt against the government, they banned the sale of China Falun Gong and others
publications and encouraged disgruntled adherents to accuse Li of stealing from the
public. Chang notes:
"Sensing that he and (Falun Gong) had fallen into disfavour - and reportedly at
the urging of authorities - Li emigrated to the United States in early 1998, where
he has since acquired permanent residence." 1
The non - violent phase of the campaign continued into May 1998, when a government
television interviewer referred to Falun Gong as a "superstition". According to Chang's
research, this resulted in about a hundred CCP party, government and military retirees,
who were adherents of Falun Gong, petitioning Jiang unsuccessfully to legalize it. The
party later had an article published in a magazine (Science and Technology for Youth),
which singled out Falun Gong as a superstition and a health risk because practitioners
might refuse conventional medical treatments for serious illnesses. A large number of
Falun Gong adherents demonstrated peacefully against the contents of the piece
outside the Tianjin editor's office. When arrests and police beatings resulted, the stage
was set for another act of protest in the national capital. 1
On April 25th, 1999, 10,000 - 16,000 ordinary Chinese citizens gathered from dawn
until late at night outside the CCP headquarters at Zhongnanhai next to Beijing's
Forbidden City. The participants included intellectuals, government officials and party
members. The protest was silent; there were no posters and not a single political
slogan or defiant thought was voiced. Chang: "On the day of the demonstration,
(Jiang) asked to be driven around Zhongnanhai in his limousine and stared at the
throng through the tinted windows. That night, clearly alarmed by the demonstration,
he wrote the CCP Politburo to assure his colleagues that he believed 'Marxism can
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triumph over Falun Gong'".1 The CCP's half century of monopolizing power in China was
suddenly in the personal view of its current leader in grave danger.
David Ownby, Director of the Centre of East Asian studies at the University of Montreal
and a specialist in modern Chinese history, wrote candidly about what was occurring in
mid-2001 and earlier in a paper prepared five years ago for the Canadian Institute of
International Affairs.2 Ownby observes that the
"seemingly benign nature of Falungong in North America and its apparently 'evil'
character in China might lead Canadians who are concerned about human rights
to look very carefully at the Chinese case against Falungong,"
Though Chinese leaders refer to Falun Gong as a "cult", Ownby notes that
"there is little in their practice in Canada and the US that supports the idea that
the group is a 'cult' in the general sense of the word. The Chinese government's
case against Falungong as a 'cult' can not be convincing unless the government
allows third party verification of its allegations of Falungong abuses in China.
China has essentially reacted out of fear of Falungong's ability to mobilize its
followers..."
2) A Policy of Persecution
If organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners were widespread across China, one
would expect some governmental policy directive to that effect. Yet, the secrecy of
policy formulation in China prevents us from determining whether such a policy exists.
Nonetheless, we do know that persecution of Falun Gong exists, as an official policy.
There are some very strong policy statements, attached as an appendix to this report,
by the Government of China and the Communist Party of China, calling for the
persecution of the Falun Gong, including physical persecution. These statements are
consistent with the allegations we have heard.
According to Li Baigen, then assistant director of the Beijing Municipal Planning office
who attended the meeting, during 1999 the three men heading the 610 office called
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more than 3000 officials to the Great Hall of the People in the capital to discuss the
campaign against Falun Gong, which was then not going well. Demonstrations were
continuing to occur around the capital. The head of the 610 office, Li Lanqing, verbally
announced the government's new policy on the movement: "defaming their
reputations, bankrupting them financially and destroying them physically." It appears
to have been only after this meeting that the deaths of adherents at police hands
began to be recorded as suicides.
We were told by Falun Gong practitioners in Canada, that many of their members in
China were told by law-enforcement officers in different parts of China that "death of
Falun Gong members count as suicide, and they will be cremated directly".
3) Incitement to Hatred
The Falun Gong in China are dehumanized both in word and deed. Policy directives are
matched by incitement to the population at large both to justify the policy of
persecution, to recruit participants, and to forestall opposition. This sort of vocabulary
directed against a particular group has become both the precursor and the hallmark of
gross human violations directed against the group.
According to Amnesty International, the Chinese Government adopted three strategies
to crush Falun Gong: violence against practitioners who refuse to renounce their
beliefs; "brainwashing" to force all known practitioners to abandon Falun Gong and
renounce it, and a more effective media campaign to turn public opinion against Falun
Gong. 3
The media campaign featured an incident on 23 January 2001 when five persons
declared to be Falun Gong practitioners by the government, including a 12 year-old girl
and her mother, purportedly set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square. The state
media repeatedly broadcast shocking images of the burning body of the girl and
material aimed at discrediting the group after the incident, reportedly changing public
3 http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engASA170282001
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opinion about Falun Gong. There is considerable concern about whether in reality the
government staged the entire incident.
Incitement to hatred is not specific enough to indicate the form that persecution takes.
But it promotes any and all violations of the worst sort. It is hard to imagine the
allegations we have heard being true in the absence of this sort of hate propaganda.
Once this sort of incitement exists, the fact that people would engage in such behaviour
against the Falun Gong - harvesting their organs and killing them in the
process - ceases to be implausible.
4) Massive Arrests
Despite the media campaign, hundreds of thousands of men and women travelled to
Beijing to protest or to unfold banners calling for the group's legalization almost daily. 4
Author Jennifer Zeng, formerly of Beijing and now living in Australia, confirms that she
managed to acquire classified information that by the end of April 2001 there had been
approximately 830,000 arrests of Falun Gong adherents.
Large numbers of Falun Gong adherents in arbitrary indefinite secret detention alone do
not prove the allegations. But the opposite, the absence of such pool of detainees,
would undermine the allegations. An extremely large group of people subject to the
exercise of the whims and power of the state, without recourse to any form of
protection of their rights, provides a potential source for organ harvesting of the
unwilling.
5) Repression
The crackdown on Falun Gong included President Jiang's creation of a special force, the
6-10 office 5 6, in every province, city, county, university, government department and
4 "Few Members of Large Sect to Face Trial, Beijing Says", The New York Times, December 2, 1999, http://www.cesnur.org/testi/falun_023.htm or “Failure admitted in crackdown”, South China Morning Post, April 22, 2000 By Willy Wo-Lap Lam 5 Appendix 6, (June 7, 1999) “Comrade Jiang Zemin’s speech at the meeting of the Political Bureau of CCCCP regarding speeding up the dealing with and settling the problem of ‘FALUN GONG’”
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government-owned business to spearhead the attack. Jiang's mandate to the office was
to "eradicate" Falun Gong 6. This included sending thousands upon thousands of its
practitioners to prisons and labour camps beginning in the summer of 1999. The US
State Department's 2005 country report on China 7, for example, indicates that its
police run hundreds of detention centres, with the 340 re-education-through-labour
ones alone having a holding capacity of about 300,000 persons. The report also
indicates that the number of Falun Gong practitioners who died in custody estimated
was from a few hundred to a few thousand.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture's recent report 8 noted that
"Since 2000, the Special Rapporteur and his predecessors have reported 314
cases of alleged torture to the Government of China. These cases represent well
over 1,160 individuals." And "In addition to this figure, it is to be noted that one
case sent in 2003 (E/CN.4/2003/68/Add.1 para. 301) detailed the alleged ill
treatment and torture of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners."
Furthermore, the report indicated that 66% of the victims of alleged torture and
ill-treatment were Falun Gong practitioners, with the remaining victims comprising
Uyghurs (11%), sex workers (8%), Tibetans (6%), human rights defenders (5%),
political dissidents (2%), and others (persons infected with HIV/AIDS and members of
religious groups 2%).
Local governments everywhere were given unlimited authority to implement Beijing's
orders in 1999 and afterwards. This included numerous staged attempts later on to
demonstrate to China's population that practitioners committed suicide by self-
immolation, killed and mutilated family members and refused medical treatment. Over
6 H. CON. RES. 188, CONCURRENT RESOLUTION, U.S http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:hc188: 7 U.S. Department of State 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices – China, March 8, 2006. (http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61605.htm) 8 U.N. Commission on Human Rights: Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Manfred Nowak, on his Mission to China from November 20 to December 2, 2005 (E/CN.4/2006/6/Add.6), March 10, 2006. (http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/chr/docs/62chr/ecn4-2006-6-Add6.doc )
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time this campaign had the desired effect and many, if not most, Chinese nationals
clearly came to accept the CCP view about Falun Gong. Only later in 1999 did the
National People's Congress pass new laws targeting Falun Gong retroactively and
purporting to legalize a long list of illegal acts done against its members.
Part of a wire story from the Beijing bureau of the Washington Post fully two summers
later (5 Aug 2001) 9 illustrates the severity of the ongoing methods of the 6-10 office
and other agents of the regime against Falun Gong practitioners:
"At a police station in western Beijing, Ouyang was stripped and interrogated for
five hours. 'If I responded incorrectly, that is if I didn't say, 'yes,' they shocked
me with the electric truncheon,' he said. Then, he was transferred to a labour
camp in Beijing's western suburbs. There, the guards ordered him to stand
facing a wall. If he moved, they shocked him. If he fell down from fatigue, they
shocked him..."
"(Later) he was taken before a group of Falun Gong inmates and rejected the
group one more time as the video cameras rolled. Ouyang left jail and entered
the brainwashing classes. Twenty days after debating Falun Gong for 16 hours a
day, he 'graduated'. 'The pressure on me was and is incredible,' he said. 'In the
past two years, I have seen the worst of what man can do. We really are the
worst animals on Earth.'"
Ownby noted that human rights organizations
"have unanimously condemned China's brutal campaign against the Falungong ,
and many governments around the world, including Canada's, have expressed
their concern." He cited Amnesty International's report of 2000 which noted that
77 Falun Gong practitioners had "died in custody, or shortly after release, in
suspicious circumstances since the crackdown began in July 1999." 2
9 Washington Post Foreign Service, “Torture Is Breaking Falun Gong: China Systematically Eradicating Group,” John Pomfret and Philip P. Pan, August 5, 2001. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A33055-2001Aug4 )
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6) The Unidentified and the Disappeared
Falun Gong detentions, though in some ways it was just Chinese repression as usual
with the Falun Gong being the unlucky targets, presented an unusual feature. Falun
Gong practitioners who had come from all over the country to Tiananmen Square in
Beijing to appeal or protest were arrested. Those who revealed their identities to their
captors would be shipped back to their home localities. Their families would be
implicated in their Falun Gong activities and pressured to join in the effort to get the
practitioners to renounce Falun Gong. Their workplace leaders, their co-workers, their
local government leaders would be held responsible and penalized for the fact that
these individuals had gone to Beijing to appeal or protest.
To protect their families and avoid the hostility of the people in their locality, many
detained Falun Gong declined to identify themselves. The result was a large Falun
Gong prison population whose identities the authorities did not know. As well, no one
who knew them knew where they were.
Though this refusal to identify themselves was done for protection purposes, it may
have had the opposite effect. It is easier to victimize a person whose whereabouts is
unknown to family members than a person whose location the family knows. This
population is a remarkably undefended group of people, even by Chinese standards.
This population of the unidentified was treated especially badly. As well, they were
moved around within the Chinese prison system for reasons not explained to the
prisoners.
Was this the population which became the source of harvested Falun Gong organs?
Obviously, the mere existence of this population does not tell us that this is so. Yet,
the existence of this population provides a ready explanation for the source of
harvested organs, if the allegations are true. Members of this population could just
disappear without anyone outside of the prison system being the wiser. Information
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about this population of the unidentified is attached as an appendix to this report.
In fact, there are many missing Falun Gong practitioners. An appendix to this report
sets out evidence of these disappearances. If every Falun Gong practitioner were
present and accounted for, the allegations with which we are faced would be disproved.
But a person can go missing for a variety of reasons. Disappearances are a human
rights violation for which China should be held accountable. But they are not
necessarily this violation.
There is every reason to believe that the Government of China is responsible for the
disappearance of many Falun Gong practitioners. Those disappearances do not prove
the allegations with which they are faced. But, like many of the other factors we
considered, they are consistent with those allegations.
7) Sources of Transplants
There are many more transplants than identifiable sources. We know that some
organs come from executed prisoners. Very few come from willing donor family
members. But these sources leave huge gaps in the totals. The number of executed
prisoners and willing sources come nowhere close to the number of transplants.
The number of executed prisoners is itself not public. We are operating only from
estimates attached as an appendix. Those estimates, when one considers global
execution totals, are immense, but nowhere near the estimated totals of transplants.
At least 98% of the organs for transplants come from someone other than family
donors.10 In the case of kidneys, for example, only 227 of 40,393 transplants - about
0.6% - done between 1971 and 2001 in China came from family donors 11. Chinese
10 http://www.transplantation.org.cn/html/2006-04/467.html Life weekly, 2006-04-07 Archived page: http://archive.edoors.com/render.php?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.transplantation.org.cn%2Fhtml%2F2006-04%2F467.html+&x=26&y=11 11 http://www.chinapharm.com.cn/html/xxhc/2002124105954.html China Pharmacy Net, 2002-12-05 Archived page:
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nationals, for cultural reasons, are reluctant to donate their organs after death. There is
no organized system of organ donation yet formed in China 12 10.
The government of China admitted to using the organs of executed prisoners only last
year 13 14, although it had been going on for many years. The regime has had no
barriers to prevent marketing the organs of "enemies of the state".
According to AI's records 15, the average number of executed prisoners between 1995
and 1999 was 1680 per year. The average between 2000 and 2005 was 1616 per year.
The numbers have bounced around from year to year, but the overall average number
for the periods before and after Falun Gong persecution began is the same. Executions
cannot explain the increase of organ transplants in China since the persecution of Falun
Gong began.
According to public reports, there were approximately 30,000 16 transplants in total
http://archive.edoors.com/content5.php?uri=http://www.chinapharm.com.cn/html/xxhc/2002124105954.html 12 http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-05/05/content_582847.htm (2006-05-05, China Daily) English Archived page: http://archive.edoors.com/content5.php?uri=http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-05/05/content_582847.htm 13 “China to 'tidy up' trade in executed prisoners' organs,” The Times, December 03, 2005 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25689-1901558,00.html 14 “Beijing Mulls New Law on Transplants of Deathrow Inmate Organs”, http://caijing.hexun.com/english/detail.aspx?issue=147&sl=2488&id=1430379 Caijing Magazine/Issue:147, Nov 28 2005 15 Index of AI Annual reports: http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/aireport/index.html, from here one can select annual report of each year. 16 http://www.biotech.org.cn/news/news/show.php?id=864 (China Biotech Information Net, 2002-12-02) http://www.chinapharm.com.cn/html/xxhc/2002124105954.html (China Pharmacy Net, 2002-12-05) Archived page: http://archive.edoors.com/content5.php?uri=http://www.chinapharm.com.cn/html/xxhc/2002124105954.html http://www.people.com.cn/GB/14739/14740/21474/2766303.html (People’s Daily, 2004-09-07, from Xinhua News Agency)
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done in China before 1999 and about 18,500 16 17 in the six year period 1994 to 1999.
Professor Bingyi Shi, vice-chair of the China Medical Organ Transplant Association, says
there were about 90,000 18 in total up until 2005, leaving about 60,000 in the six year
period 2000 to 2005 since the persecution of Falun Gong began.
The other identified sources of organ transplants, willing family donors and the brain
dead, have always been tiny. In 2005, living-related kidney transplant consists of 0.5%
of total transplants national wide 19. The total of brain dead donors for all years and all
of China is 9 up to March 2006 19 20. There is no indication of a significant increase in
either of these categories in recent years. Presumably the identified sources of organ
transplants which produced 18,500 organ transplants in the six year period 1994 to
1999 produced the same number of organs for transplants in the next six year period
2000 to 2005. That means that the source of 41,500 transplants for the six year period
2000 to 2005 is unexplained.
Where do the organs come from for the 41,500 transplants? The allegation of organ
harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners provides an answer.
Again this sort of gap in the figures does not establish that the allegation of harvesting
of organs from Falun Gong practitioners is true. But the converse, a full explanation of
the source of all organ transplants, would disprove the allegation. If the source of all
organ transplants could be traced either to willing donors or executed prisoners, then
17 “The Number of Renal Transplant (Asia & the Middle and Near East)1989-2000,” Medical Net (Japan), http://www.medi-net.or.jp/tcnet/DATA/renal_a.html 18 http://www.transplantation.org.cn/html/2006-03/394.html (Health Paper Net 2006-03-02) Archived page: http://archive.edoors.com/render.php?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.transplantation.org.cn%2Fhtml%2F2006-03%2F394.html+&x=32&y=11 19 “CURRENT SITUATION OF ORGAN DONATION IN CHINA FROM STIGMA TO STIGMATA”, Abstract, The World Transplant Congress, http://www.abstracts2view.com/wtc/ Zhonghua K Chen, Fanjun Zeng, Changsheng Ming, Junjie Ma, Jipin Jiang. Institute of Organ Transplantation, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, HUST, Wuhan, China. http://www.abstracts2view.com/wtc/view.php?nu=WTC06L_1100&terms= 20 http://www.transplantation.org.cn/html/2006-03/400.html , (Beijing Youth Daily, 2006-03-06)
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the allegation about the Falun Gong would be disproved. But such tracing is
impossible.
Estimates of the executions of China are often much higher than the figures based on
publicly available records of executions. There is no official Chinese reporting on
overall statistics of executions, leaving totals open to estimation.
One technique some of those involved in estimating executions have used is the
number of transplant operations. Because it is known that at least some transplants
come from executed prisoners and that family donors are few and far between, some
analysts have deduced from the number of transplants that executions have increased.
This reasoning is unpersuasive. One cannot estimate executions from transplants
unless executions are the only alleged source of transplants. Yet, Falun Gong
practitioners are another alleged source. It is impossible to conclude that those
practitioners are not a source of organs for transplants because of the number of
executions where the number of executions is deduced from the number of transplants.
There appeared to be only 22 21 liver transplant centres operating across China before
1999, compared to fully 500 in mid - April, 2006 22 12. The number of liver transplant
operations in all of China appeared to total 135 by 1998 11, contrasted with more
than 4000 18 in 2005 alone. For kidneys, the pattern is also significant (3,596 11
transplants in 1998 and nearly 10,000 18 in 2005).
The increase in organ transplants in China parallels the increase in persecution of the
21 http://unn.people.com.cn/GB/channel413/417/1100/1131/200010/17/1857.html (People’s Daily Net and Union News Net, 2000-10-17). Archived at: http://archive.edoors.com/content5.php?uri=http://unn.people.com.cn/GB/channel413/417/1100/1131/200010/17/1857.html 22 According to Deputy Minister of Health, Mr. Huang Jiefu, http://www.transplantation.org.cn/html/2006-04/467.html (Lifeweekly, 2006-04-07). Archived at: http://archive.edoors.com/render.php?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.transplantation.org.cn%2Fhtml%2F2006-04%2F467.html+&x=26&y=11
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Falun Gong. These parallel increases, in themselves, do not prove the allegation. But
they are consistent with the allegation. If the parallel did not exist, that hypothetical
non-existence would undercut the allegations.
8) Blood Testing
We know that Falun Gong practitioners in detention are systematically blood tested.
We have heard such a number of testimonials to that effect that this testing exists
beyond a shadow of a doubt. Why is it happening?
The practitioners themselves are not told. It is unlikely that the testing serves a health
purpose. For one, it is unnecessary to blood test people systematically simply as a
health precaution. For another, the health of the Falun Gong in detention is
disregarded in so many other ways. It is implausible that the authorities would blood
test Falun Gong as a precautionary health measure.
Blood testing is a pre-requisite for organ transplants. Donors need to be matched with
recipients so that the antibodies of the recipients do not reject the organs of the
donors.
The mere fact of blood testing does not establish that organ harvesting of Falun Gong
practitioners is taking place. But the opposite is true. If there were no blood testing,
the allegation would be disproved. The widespread blood testing of Falun Gong
practitioners in detention cuts off this avenue of disproof.
9) Corpses with Missing Organs
A number of family members of Falun Gong practitioners who died in detention
reported seeing the corpses of their loved ones with surgical incisions and body parts
missing. The authorities gave no coherent explanation for these mutilated corpses.
Again the evidence about these mutilated corpses is attached as an appendix to this
report.
- 19 -
We have only a few instances of such mutilated corpses. We have no official
explanation why they were mutilated. Their mutilation is consistent with organ
harvesting. We cannot even guess otherwise why these corpses would have been
mutilated and body parts removed.
10) A Confession
We met one witness who said that her surgeon husband told her that he personally
removed the corneas from approximately 2,000 anaesthetized Falun Gong prisoners in
northeast China during the two year period before October, 2003, at which time he
refused to continue. The surgeon made it clear to his wife that none of the cornea
"donors" survived the experience because other surgeons removed other vital organs
and all of their bodies were then burned. The woman is not a Falun Gong practitioner.
This confession is second hand. The woman is not confessing something she did.
Rather she is relating a terrible admission her husband made to her.
The statement of this witness needs to be assessed for its credibility, something this
report does later. Here we can say that, if it can be believed, it establishes all on its
own the allegation.
11) Admissions
One of us has listened with a certified Mandarin-English interpreter to the cited
recorded telephone conversations between officials and callers on behalf of the Falun
Gong communities in Canada and the United States. Certified copies of the relevant
transcripts in Mandarin and English were provided to us. The accuracy of the
translations of the portions of them used in this report is attested to by the certified
translator, Mr. C. Y., a certified interpreter with the Government of Ontario. He certified
that he had listened to the recording of the conversations referred to in this report and
has read the transcripts in Chinese and the translated English version of the
conversations, and verifies that the transcripts are correct and translations accurate.
The original recordings of the calls remain available as well. One of us met with two
- 20 -
of the callers in Toronto on May 27th to discuss the routing, timing, recording, accuracy
of the translations from Mandarin to English and other features of the calls.
One of the callers, "Ms. M", who will not be identified to avoid risk of harm to family
members still in China and will be referred to hereafter as M, told one of us that in early
March, 2006 she managed to get through to the Public Security Bureau in Shanxi. The
respondent there told her that healthy and young prisoners are selected from the
prison population to be organ donors. If the candidates could not be tricked into
providing the blood samples necessary for successful transplants, the official went on
with guileless candour, employees of the office take the samples by force.
On March 18 or 19, 2006 M spoke to a representative of the Eye Department at the
People's Liberation Army hospital in Shenyang in north-eastern China, although she was
not able to make a full recorded transcript. Her notes indicate that the person
identifying himself as the department’s Chief-Physician said the facility did "many
cornea operations", adding that "we also have fresh corneas." Asked what that means,
the Chief-Physician replied "...just taken from bodies".
At Army Hospital 301 in Beijing in April, 2006, a surgeon, who told M that she did liver
transplants herself, added that the source of the organs was a "state secret" and that
anyone revealing the source "could be disqualified from doing such operations."
The second investigator for the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of
Falun Gong placed her calls from within the continental United States and will
hereafter be referred to as N. N telephoned approximately thirty hospitals, detention
centres and courts across China and recorded a number of them admitting to the use of
organs from Falun Gong practitioners. Her methods, translations and so on were noted
by the one of us who met with her in Toronto on May 27th to have been done on a
virtually identical basis as M and are thus accepted by both of us as accurately
representing what was said over the telephone. The same accredited translator worked
on the texts of her recorded conversations.
- 21 -
Hospitals and Detention Centres Admissions in Telephone
Conversations
FALUN GONG ORGANS ARE STILL READILY AVAILABLE
Admission from Mijiang Detention Centre:
On June 8, 2006, an official at the Mijiang city detention centre, Heilongjiang
Province admitted that the centre then had at least five or six male Falun Gong
prisoners under 40 years-of-age available as organ suppliers. Mr. Li of the centre
also gave details of the operation of selecting Falun Gong prisoners as organ
suppliers for hospitals:
1. This particular detention centre at the time picked the organ suppliers, not the
hospital.
2. Director Cui of the detention centre at the time of the conversation was the
point of contact for organ suppliers.
3. Blood will be drawn from the prisoners picked to become organ suppliers, and
such prisoners do not know the purpose of the blood test.
4. The detention centre has various means of obtaining blood samples from
reluctant “donors”.
Shanghai's Zhongshan hospital:
A doctor at this hospital in mid-March of this year said that all of his organs
come from Falun Gong practitioners.
Qianfoshan hospital in Shandong:
A doctor at this hospital in March implied that he then had organs from Falun
Gong persons and added that in April there would be "more of these kinds of
bodies..."
Minzu hospital in Nanning city:
In May, Dr Lu of this hospital said organs from Falun Gong practitioners were
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not available at his institution and suggested the caller call Guangzhou to get
them. He also admitted that he earlier went to prisons to select healthy Falun
Gong persons in their 30s to provide their organs.
Zhengzhou Medical University in Henan province:
In mid-March of this year, Dr Wang of this centre agreed that "we pick all the
young and healthy kidneys..."
Guangzhou Military region hospital:
Dr Zhu of this hospital in April of this year said he then had some type B kidneys
from Falun Gong, but would have "several batches" before May 1 and perhaps
no more until May 20 or later.
Oriental Organ Transplant Centre:
Chief-Physician Song at this centre in mid-March this year volunteered that his
hospital had more than ten “beating hearts”. The caller asked if that meant "live
bodies" and Song replied, "Yes it is so."
Wuhan city Tongji hospital:
An official at this hospital two weeks later told the caller that "(i)t's not a
problem" for his institution when the caller said, "...we hope the kidney
suppliers are alive. (We're) looking for live organ transplants from prisoners, for
example, using living bodies from prisoners who practise Falun Gong, Is it
possible?"
Detention Centres and Courts:
First Detention Centre of Qinhuangdao City
An official at this centre told the caller in mid-May this year that she should call
the Intermediate People's court to obtain Falun Gong kidneys.
- 23 -
Qinhuangdao Intermediate People's court
The same day, an official at the Intermediate People's court said they had no
Falun Gong live kidneys, but had had them in the past, specifically in 2001.
First Criminal Bureau of the Jinzhou people's court
In May of this year, an official in the court told the caller that access to Falun
Gong kidneys currently depended on "qualifications" of the organ seekers.
The map of China which follows indicates the regions where detention or hospital
personnel have made admissions to telephone investigators:
Most of the excerpted phone call texts are in an appendix. For illustration purposes,
excerpts of three conversations follow:
- 24 -
(1) Mijiang City Detention Centre, Heilongjiang province (8 June 2006):
M: "Do you have Falun Gong [organ] suppliers? ..."
Li: "We used to have, yes."
M: "... what about now?"
Li: "... Yes."
...
M: "Can we come to select, or you provide directly to us?"
Li: "We provide them to you."
M: "What about the price?"
Li: "We discuss after you come."
...
M: "... How many [Falun Gong suppliers] under age 40 do you have?"
Li: "Quite a few."
...
M: "Are they male or female?"
Li: "Male"
...
M: "Now, for ... the male Falun Gong [prisoners], How many of them do
you have?"
Li: "Seven, eight, we have [at least] five, six now."
M: "Are they from countryside or from the city?"
Li: "countryside."
(2) Nanning City Minzu Hospital in Guangxi Autonomous Region
(22 May 2006):
M: "...Could you find organs from Falun Gong practitioners?"
Dr. Lu: "Let me tell you, we have no way to get (them). It's rather difficult to get
it now in Guangxi. If you cannot wait, I suggest you go to Guangzhou
because it's very easy for them to get the organs. They are able to look
- 25 -
for (them) nation wide. As they are performing the liver transplant, they
can get the kidney for you at the same time, so it's very easy for them to
do. Many places where supplies are short go to them for help..."
M: "Why is it easy for them to get?"
Lu: "Because they are an important institution. They contact the (judicial)
system in the name of the whole university."
M: "Then they use organs from Falun Gong practitioners?"
Lu: "Correct..."
M: "...what you used before (organs from Falun Gong practitioners), was it
from detention centre(s) or prison(s)?"
Lu: "From prisons."
M: "...and it was from healthy Falun Gong practitioners...?"
Lu: "Correct. We would choose the good ones because we assure the quality
in our operation."
M: "That means you choose the organs yourself."
Lu: "Correct..."
M: "Usually, how old is the organ supplier?"
Lu: "Usually in their thirties."
M: "... Then you will go to the prison to select yourself?"
Lu: "Correct. We must select it."
M: "What if the chosen one doesn't want to have blood drawn?"
Lu: "He will for sure let us do it."
M: "How?"
Lu: "They will for sure find a way. What do you worry about? These kinds of
things should not be of any concern to you. They have their procedures."
M: "Does the person know that his organ will be removed?"
Lu: "No, he doesn't."
(3) Oriental Organ Transplant Centre (also called Tianjin City No 1 Central
Hospital),Tianjin City, (15 March 2006):
N: Is this Chief-Physician Song?"
- 26 -
Song: Yes, please speak."
...
N: Her doctor told her that the kidney is quite good because he [the
supplier,] practises ...Falun Gong."
Song: "Of course. We have all those who breathe and with heart beat...Up until
now, for this year, we have more than ten kidneys, more than ten such
kidneys."
N: "More than ten of this kind of kidneys? You mean live bodies?"
Song: "Yes it is so."
12) Waiting Times
Hospital web sites in China advertise short waiting times for organ transplants.
Transplants of long dead donors are not viable because of organ deterioration after
death. If we take these hospital's self-promotions at face value, they tell us that there
are a number of people now alive who are available almost on demand as sources of
organs.
The wait times for organ transplants for organ recipients in China appear to be much
lower than anywhere else. The China International Transplantation Assistant Centre
website says, "It may take only one week to find out the suitable (kidney) donor, the
maximum time being one month..." 23. It goes further, "If something wrong with the
donor's organ happens, the patient will have the option to be offered another organ
donor and have the operation again in one week." 24 The site of the Oriental Organ
Transplant Centre in early April, 2006, claimed that "the average waiting time (for a
suitable liver) is 2 weeks." 25 The website of the Changzheng Hospital in Shanghai
23 http://en.zoukiishoku.com/list/qa2.htm Archived page: http://archive.edoors.com/render.php?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fen.zoukiishoku.com%2Flist%2Fqa2.htm&x=19&y=11 24 http://en.zoukiishoku.com/list/volunteer.htm Archived at: http://archive.edoors.com/render.php?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fen.zoukiishoku.com%2Flist%2Fvolunteer.htm+&x=8&y=9 25 The front page has been altered. The archived page is at: http://archive.edoors.com/content5.php?uri=http://www.ootc.net/special_images/ootc1.png
- 27 -
says: "...the average waiting time for a liver supply is one week among all the
patients"26.
In contrast, the median waiting time for a kidney in Canada was 32.5 months in 2003
and in British Columbia it was even longer at 52.5 months 27. If as indicated the
survival period for a kidney is between 24-48 hours and a liver about 12 hours 28, the
presence of a large bank of living kidney-liver "donors" must be the only way China's
transplant centres can assure such short waits to customers. The astonishingly short
waiting times advertised for perfectly- matched organs would suggest the existence of
both a computer matching system for transplants and a large bank of live prospective
'donors'.
The advertisements do not identify Falun Gong practitioners as the source of these
organs. But there are no other identified sources. Even if the Falun Gong as the
sources of these organs is only an allegation, it is the only allegation we have. No
other large body of people now alive have been identified to us as sources of organs
sufficient in numbers to meet the large number of transplant demands now being made
and met in China.
13) Incriminating Information on Websites
Some of the material available on the websites of various transplant centres in China
before March 9, 2006 (when allegations about large-scale organ seizures resurfaced in
Canadian and other world media) is also inculpatory. Understandably, a good deal of it
has since been removed. So these comments will refer only to sites that can still be
found at archived locations, with the site locations being identified either in the
comments or as footnotes. A surprising amount of self-accusatory material is still
26 http://www.transorgan.com/apply.asp Archived at : http://archive.edoors.com/render.php?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.transorgan.com%2Fapply.asp&x=15&y=8 27 Canadian Organ Replacement Register, Canadian Institute for Health Information, (http://www.cihi.ca/cihiweb/en/downloads/CORR-CST2005_Gill-rev_July22_2005.ppt), July 2005 28 Donor Matching System, The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) http://www.optn.org/about/transplantation/matchingProcess.asp
- 28 -
available as of the final week of June, 2006 to web browsers. We list here only four
examples:
(1) China International Transplantation Network Assistance Centre Website
(http://en.zoukiishoku.com/ )
(Shenyang City)
This website as of May 17, 2006 indicated in the English version (the Mandarin one
evidently disappeared after March 9) that the centre was established in 2003 at the
First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University "...specifically for foreign friends.
Most of the patients are from all over the world." The opening sentence of the site 29
introduction declares that "Viscera (one dictionary definition: "soft interior
organs...including the brain, lungs, heart etc") providers can be found immediately!"
On another page 30 on the same site is this statement: "...the number of kidney
transplant operations is at least 5,000 every year all over the country. So many
transplantation operations are owing to the support of the Chinese government. The
supreme demotic court, supreme demotic law - officer, police, judiciary, department of
health and civil administration have enacted a law together to make sure that organ
donations are supported by the government. This is unique in the world."
In the 'question and answer' section of the site are found:
"Before the living kidney transplantation, we will ensure the donor's renal function...So
it is more safe than in other countries, where the organ is not from a living donor." 31
. "Q: Are the organs for the pancreas transplant(ed) from brain death (sic) (dead)
patients?"
29 The original page has been altered. Older versions can still be found at Internet Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20050305122521/http://en.zoukiishoku.com/ 30 http://en.zoukiishoku.com/list/facts.htm or use archived version at: http://archive.edoors.com/render.php?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fen.zoukiishoku.com%2Flist%2Ffacts.htm&x=24&y=12 31 http://en.zoukiishoku.com/list/qa.htm or use archived version: http://archive.edoors.com/render.php?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fen.zoukiishoku.com%2Flist%2Fqa.htm&x=27&y=10
- 29 -
"A: Our organs do not come from brain death victims because the state of the
organ may not be good." 32
(2)Orient Organ Transplant Centre Website
(http://www.ootc.net )
(Tianjin City)
On a page which we were informed was changed in mid-April (but can still be viewed
as an archive 25) is the claim that from "January 2005 to now, we have done 647 liver
transplants - 12 of them done this week; the average waiting time is 2 weeks." A chart
also removed about the same time (but archive still available 33) indicates that from
virtually a standing start in 1998 (when it managed only 9 liver transplants) by 2005 it
had completed fully 2248 34.
In contrast, according to the Canadian Organ Replacement Register27, the total in
Canada for all kinds of organ transplants in 2004 was 1773.
(3)Jiaotang University Hospital Liver Transplant Centre Website
(http://www.firsthospital.cn/hospital/index.asp )
32 http://en.zoukiishoku.com/list/qa7.htm or use archived version: http://archive.edoors.com/render.php?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fen.zoukiishoku.com%2Flist%2Fqa7.htm&x=35&y=10 33 The front page has been altered. Archived at: http://archive.edoors.com/content5.php?uri=http://www.ootc.net/special_images/ooct_achievement.jpg http://archive.edoors.com/content5.php?uri=http://www.ootc.net/special_images/ootc2.png 34 The front page has been altered. Archived at: http://archive.edoors.com/content5.php?uri=http://www.ootc.net/special_images/ooct_case.jpg http://archive.edoors.com/content5.php?uri=http://www.ootc.net/special_images/ootc1.png
- 30 -
(Shanghai)
In a posting on April 26, 2006 35, the sohu website says in part: "The liver transplant
cases (here) are seven in 2001, 53 cases in 2002, 105 cases in 2003, 144 cases in
2004, 147 cases in 2005 and 17 cases in January, 2006," .
(4) Website of Changzheng Hospital Organ Transplant Centre, affiliated with No. 2
Military Medical University
(http://www.transorgan.com/)
(Shanghai)
A page was removed after March 9, 2006. (Internet Archive page is available 36.) It
contains the following graph depicting the number of liver transplant each year by this
Centre:
In the "Liver Transplant Application" form 37, it states on the top, "...Currently, for the
liver transplant, the operation fee and the hospitalisation expense together is about
200,000 yuan ($66,667 CND), and the average waiting time for a liver supply is one
35 http://www.health.sohu.com/20060426/n243015842.shtml Archived at: http://archive.edoors.com/content5.php?uri=http://health.sohu.com/52/81/harticle15198152.shtml 36 The URL of the removed page as of March 2005 in the Internet Archive is http://web.archive.org/web/20050317130117/http://www.transorgan.com/about_g_intro.asp 37 http://www.transorgan.com/apply.asp , Archived at : http://archive.edoors.com/render.php?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.transorgan.com%2Fapply.asp&x=15&y=8
- 31 -
week among all the patients in our hospital...."
14) Victim Interviews
We conducted a number of interviews with victims of Falun Gong repression in China
who now reside in Canada. These interviews revealed activities by the authorities
which, while inconclusive in isolation, in context with everything else we considered,
were corroborative and consistent with the allegations.
(1) Ms. Yuzhi Wang, Vancouver
One of us met with the Ms. Wang in Toronto on May 27th at a location at the University
of Toronto and heard her deeply disturbing personal history. For being a Falun Gong
practitioner and therefore suddenly "an enemy of the people" only as of mid-1999, she
spent most of her time between 2000 and the end of 2001 in labour camps, with 20-50
persons squeezed into a cell of approximately 15 square metres. By late 2001, near
death from various forms of torture over a lengthy period for refusing to give up her
beliefs, she was sent to hospital for "treatment", which included approximately three
months of forced feeding after she began a hunger strike in desperation and more
beatings by thugs from the 6-10 office.
In Harbin, Wang was examined thoroughly at several hospitals, and the examining
doctors indicated that she had organ damage. Later, when she overheard a doctor say
that she would not recover, the 610 office personnel "suddenly lost interest in me and I
(eventually) managed to escape from the hospital." When in time her health
recovered, she found a way to relocate to a country in the Middle East, but even there
6-10 agents attempted to kidnap her because she was criticizing the Jiang regime to
tourists visiting there from China. Wang gives much credit to Canadian immigration
officials there for intervening and enabling her to come to Canada as a refugee. She is
convinced that she survived only because her captors in Harbin concluded they could
not profit by selling her organs, which they concluded were damaged by their
"treatments".
- 32 -
(2) Mr. Xiaohua Wang, Montreal
On meeting Mr. Wang on May 27th, he provided a detailed statement of his periods of
persecution by officials during 2001 and 2002. It began when police arrested him at a
Kunming city design institute where he worked as an engineer, ransacked his home,
stole his computer, and took him to prison. His wife and two-year-old child could only
scream at the departing police vehicle. In jail, he was beaten into unconsciousness by
long term inmates on the order of the warden, whose constant mantra was, "Beating is
the only way to treat (Falun Gong)".
Wang was later transferred to the local "brainwashing centre". When released, he fled
to a distant region of the country without his family, where he found work until he was
again arrested as one of the 6-10 office's "most wanted criminals". He ended up at the
Yunnan forced labour camp #2, which manufactures artificial gems and crystals for
export through the application of chromium oxide in the manufacturing process. For
refusing to recant his Falun Gong beliefs, Wang was kept there for almost two years.
His hair turned gray from the constant exposure to the chemical and 16-hour work
days.
In January, 2002, the local hospital did a comprehensive physical examination on every
Falun Gong prisoner, including an electrocardiogram, whole body x-ray, liver, blood and
kidney test. Beforehand, he was told by the police: "The Communist party cares about
you so much. They want to transform Falun Gong at all costs." Little knowing the
probable real purpose of the tests at the time, he cooperated. Miraculously, he
managed to get out of China and get to Canada in early 2005. He also praises Canadian
immigration officials for getting him and his family out speedily.
(3) Ms. Na Gan, Toronto
Ms Gan worked as a customs officer at the Beijing International Airport for 11 years
- 33 -
until mid-July, 1999, when she and five other Falun Gong practitioners attempted to
avail themselves of each citizen's specified constitutional right to petition at a
designated location near the CCP headquarters in central Beijing. Police beat the group
and dragged all of them into waiting buses. Thereafter, she was incarcerated on five
further occasions because she refused to renounce Falun Gong. When a psychiatrist
examined her in a hospital and pronounced her mentally fit, the police still kept her in a
locked room there for eight days with patients who were screaming. When she later
unfurled a banner in Tiananmen Square, saying "truthfulness-compassion-tolerance",
she was kicked by police. Back in custody, she was beaten by other prisoners at the
direction of officials and forced to stand for hours in the snow without an overcoat.
In March, 2000, the banner incident got her a one year sentence under house arrest,
expulsion from the Communist party, and termination of her salary. By the year's end,
she was back in a crowded cell with mostly Falun Gong adherents. When she refused to
read aloud an article defaming Falun Gong, a policeman kicked her in the head
repeatedly. She was next moved to the Beijing women's labour camp, where the
treatment was so severe that she finally signed a pledge to renounce Falun Gong. She
managed to leave China for Canada as an immigrant from fear of further persecution in
May, 2004 but without her husband and daughter.
Gan's observations relative to organ harvesting are probably inconclusive. Numerous
Falun Gong prisoners with her in detention in Beijing - some cells holding as many as
30 women - were identified by four digit numbers only. One night, she was awakened
by noises, only to find the next morning that some of the numbered inmates had been
dragged from their cells and never returned. One cannot fairly conclude the worst here
without knowing more. For five months in mid-2001, she was part of forced labour
team of approximately 130 mostly female Falun Gong prisoners. Only the Falun Gong
members in the group were taken by soldiers to a nearby police hospital for blood and
urine tests, x-rays, and eye examinations. This medical attention seemed to her at the
time completely out of character with everything else experienced at the camp. Only
later did she learn about the organ harvesting going occurring across China.
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15) Human Rights Violations Generally
Falun Gong are not the only victims of human rights violations in China. It is
incontestable that the organs of prisoners sentenced to death are harvested after
execution.
Besides Falun Gong, other prime targets of human rights violations are Tibetans,
Christians, Uighurs, democracy activists and human rights defenders. Rule of Law
mechanisms in place to prevent human rights violations, such as an independent
judiciary, access to counsel on detention, habeas corpus, the right to public trial, are
glaringly absent in China. China, according to its constitution, is ruled by the
Communist Party. It is not ruled by law.
This overall pattern of human rights violations, like many other factors, does not in
itself prove the allegations. But it removes an element of disproof. It is impossible to
say of these allegations that it is out of step with an overall pattern of respect for
human rights in China. While the allegations, in themselves, are surprising, they are
less surprising with a country that has the human rights record of China than they
would be for many other countries.
16) Financial Considerations
In China, organ transplanting is a very profitable business. We can trace the money of
the people who pay for organ transplants to specific hospitals which do organ
transplants, but we can not go further than that. We do not know who gets the
money the hospitals receive. Are doctors and nurses engaged in criminal organ
harvesting paid exorbitant sums for their crimes? That was a question it was
impossible for us to answer, since we had no way of knowing where the money went.
China International Transplantation Network Assistance Centre Website
(http://en.zoukiishoku.com/ )
(Shenyang City)
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Before its indicated removal from the site 38 in April, 2006, the size of the profits for
transplants was suggested in the following price list:
Kidney US$62,000
Liver US$98,000-130,000
Liver-kidney US$160,000-180,000
Kidney-pancreas US$150,000
Lung US$150,000-170,000
Heart US$130,000-160,000
Cornea US$30,000
A standard way of investigating any crime allegation where money changes hands is to
follow the money trail. But for China, its closed doors means that following the money
trail is impossible. Not knowing where the money goes proves nothing. But it also
disproves nothing, including these allegations.
17) Corruption
Corruption is a major problem across China. State institutions are sometimes run for
the benefit of those in charge of them, rather than for the benefit of the people.
Military hospitals across the country operate independently from the Ministry of Health
and, while the figures for their organ transplants are secret, we understand they are
large. Trafficking in Falun Gong vital organs would be consistent with the numerous
other commercial activities on the part of the Chinese army, especially in the years up
until 2004 while Jiang was chairman of the country's Military Commission.
The widespread corruption of official Chinese institutions raises the question whether
the harvesting of Falun Gong organs for transplants, if it does occur, happens as the
result of official policy or as the result of the profiteering of individual hospitals, taking
38 Yet, one can still go to the Internet Archive to find the information on this website from March 2006: http://archive.edoors.com/render.php?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fen.zoukiishoku.com%2Flist%2Fcost.htm+&x=16&y=11
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advantage of the defenceless of a captive Falun Gong population in their regions. The
policy of repression of the Falun Gong means that they are in prison without rights, at
the disposition of corrupt authorities. The incitement to hatred against the Falun
Gong and their dehumanization means that they can be butchered and killed without
qualms by those who buy into this official hate propaganda.
Whether the harvesting of Falun Gong organs, if it does occur, happens as the result of
official policy or unofficial corruption, is for us difficult to be absolutely certain about.
Chinese officials, in theory in charge of the country, sometimes have substantial
difficulty in determining whether corruption exists, let alone how to put an end to it.
For us, on the outside, it is easier to form a conclusion on the result, whether or not the
alleged organ harvesting occurs, than to determine whether this practice, if it exists, is
the result of policy or corruption.
18) Legislation
China in March enacted legislation to take effect July 1 to ban sales of human organs
and require that donors give written permission for their organs to be transplanted.
The legislation is titled a "temporary regulation." The rules further limit transplant
surgery to certain institutions. These institutions must verify that the organs are from
legal sources. Hospital transplant ethics committees must approve all transplants in
advance.
This legislation is welcome. Yet, its very enactment highlights the fact that there is no
such legislation in place now, the lawlessness now enveloping organ transplants. This
very lawless, again, though it does not prove the allegations, removes a possible
element of disproof. The absence of any legal constraints on organ transplants in
China makes the allegations on which this report focuses easier to accept.
Up to July 1st, Chinese law has allowed the buying and selling of organs. Chinese law
has not required that donors give written permission for their organs to be
transplanted. There have been no restriction on the institutions which could engage in
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organ harvesting or transplants. Until July 1, there was no requirement that the
institutions engaged in transplants had to verify that the organs being transplanted
were from legal sources. There was no obligation to have transplant ethics committees
approve all transplants in advance.
As well, the fact that the legislation came into force on July 1 does not mean that the
problem, if it existed, has ceased to exist since that date. In China, there is a large
step between the enactment of legislation and its implementation.
To take an obvious example, the 1982 Constitution of China provides that the people of
China will turn China into a country with a high level of democracy. We are now twenty
four years from the enactment of that commitment to democracy. Yet China is far from
democratic.
The mere fact that China now has in force organ transplant legislation does not mean,
in itself, that the legislation is implemented. Indeed, the overall record of China in
implementing new legislation is such that the old practices for organ transplants,
whatever they may happen to be, are likely to continue, at least in some places in
China, for quite some time.
G. Credibility
We conclude that the verbal admissions in the transcripts of interviews of investigators
can be trusted. There is no doubt in our minds that these interviews did take place with
the persons claimed to be interviewed at the time and place indicated and that the
transcripts accurately reflect what was said.
Moreover, the content of what was said can itself be believed. For one, when weighed
against the recent international uproar about alleged organ seizures as the 2008 Beijing
Olympics approach, the admissions made at the various institutions are contrary to the
reputational interests of the government of China in attempting to convince the
- 38 -
international community that the widespread killing of Falun Gong prisoners for their
vital organs has not occurred.
The testimony of the wife of the surgeon allegedly complicit in Falun Gong organ
harvesting was credible to us, partly because of its extreme detail. However, that
detail also posed a problem for us, because it provided a good deal of information
which it was impossible to corroborate independently. We were reluctant to base our
findings on sole source information. So, in the end, we relied on the testimony of this
witness only where it was corroborative and consistent with other evidence, rather than
as sole source information.
In the course of our work, we have come across a number of people sceptical of the
allegations. This scepticism has a number of different causes. Some of the
scepticism reminds of the statement of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter
1943 to a Polish diplomat in reaction to being told by Jan Karski about the Holocaust.
Frankfurter said:
"I did not say that this young man was lying. I said that I was unable to believe
what he told me. There is a difference."
The allegations here are so shocking that they are almost impossible to believe. The
allegations, if true, would represent a grotesque form of evil which, despite all the
depravations humanity has seen, would be new to this planet. The very horror makes
us reel back in disbelief. But that disbelief does not mean that the allegations are
untrue.
H. Further Investigation
Obviously, this report is not the final word on this subject. There is much that we
ourselves, given the opportunity, would rather do before we completed the report.
But it would mean pursuing avenues of investigation which are not now open to us.
We will welcome any comments on its contents or any additional information individuals
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or governments might be willing to provide.
We would like to see Chinese hospital records of transplants. Are there consents on
file? Are there records of sources of organs?
Donors can survive many forms of transplant operations. No one can survive a full
liver or heart donation. But kidney donations are normally not fatal. Where are the
surviving donors? We would like to do a random sampling of donations to see if we
could locate the donors.
Family members of deceased donors should either know of the consents of the donors.
Alternatively, the family members should have given the consents themselves. Here,
too, we would like to do a random sampling of immediate family members of deceased
donors to see if the families either consented themselves to the donations or were
aware of the consent of the donor.
China has engaged in a major expansion of organ transplant facilities in recent years.
This expansion likely would have been accompanied by feasibility studies indicating
organ sources. We would like to see these feasibility studies.
Ideally, we would like to pursue further research before we come to any firm
conclusions. But the very willingness to engage in further research may require the
forming of tentative conclusions. If we could decide now that there is nothing in the
allegations, we might well further conclude that additional research would be pointless.
I. Conclusions
Based on what we now know, we have come to the regrettable conclusion that the
allegations are true. We believe that there has been and continues today to be large
scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners.
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We have concluded that the government of China and its agencies in numerous parts of
the country, in particular hospitals but also detention centres and 'people's courts',
since 1999 have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of
conscience. Their vital organs, including hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas, were
virtually simultaneously seized involuntarily for sale at high prices, sometimes to
foreigners, who normally face long waits for voluntary donations of such organs in their
home countries.
How many of the victims were first convicted of any offence, serious or otherwise, in
legitimate courts, we are unable to estimate because such information appears to be
unavailable both to Chinese nationals and foreigners. It appears to us that many
human beings belonging to a peaceful voluntary organization made illegal seven years
ago by President Jiang because he thought it might threaten the dominance of the
Communist Party of China have been in effect executed by medical practitioners for
their organs.
Our conclusion comes not from any one single item of evidence, but rather the piecing
together of all the evidence we have considered. Each portion of the evidence we
have considered is, in itself, verifiable and, in most cases, incontestable. Put together,
they paint a damning whole picture. It is their combination that has convinced us.
J. Recommendations
1) It goes without saying that the harvesting of organs of unwilling Falun Gong
practitioners, if it is happening, as we believe it is, should cease.
2) Organ harvesting of unwilling donors where it is either systematic or widespread is a
crime against humanity. We are not in a position, with the resources and information
at our disposal, to conduct a criminal investigation. Criminal authorities in China
should investigate the allegation for possible prosecution.
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3) Governmental, non-governmental and inter-governmental human rights
organizations with far better investigative capacity than ours should take these
allegations seriously and make their own determinations whether or not they are true.
4) Article 3 of the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking
in Persons, bans, among other practices,... the removal of organs. Governments should
request the relevant agency of the UN (we would suggest the UN Committee Against
Torture and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture), to investigate if the government of
China has engaged in, or is engaging in now, in violations of any of the terms of Article
3. If so, the necessary steps to seek a remedy should be initiated with deliberate haste.
5) Until the Chinese law on organ transplants is effectively implemented, foreign
governments should not issue visas to doctors from China seeking to travel abroad for
the purpose of training in organ or bodily issue transplantation. Any doctor in China
known to be involved in trafficking in the organs of prisoners should be barred entry by
all foreign countries permanently.
6) All states should strengthen their laws against the crime of trafficking in organs. The
laws should require doctors to report to the authorities of their country any evidence
suggesting that a patient has obtained an organ from a trafficked person abroad,
defined to include persons in detention abroad.
7) All should prevent and, at the very least, discourage their nationals from obtaining
organ transplants in China until the Chinese law on organ transplants is rigorously
implemented. States should, if necessary, deny passports or revoke passports of those
who are travelling to China for organ transplants.
8) Until the international community is satisfied that the new Chinese law on organ
transplants is effectively implemented, foreign funding agencies, medical organizations
and individual health professionals should not participate in any Government of
China-sponsored organ transplant research or meetings. Foreign companies which
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currently provide goods and services to China's organ transplant programs should cease
and desist immediately until the government of China can demonstrate that their law
on organ transplants is effective.
9) The current form of dialogue between Canada and China over human rights should
cease. Canadian political scientist and former diplomat Charles Burton recently declared
the dialogue a charade. In hindsight, the Government erred in agreeing to the talk fests
in exchange for Canada no longer co-sponsoring the yearly motion criticizing China's
government at the then UN Human Rights Commission.
10) The repression, imprisonment and severe mistreatment of Falun Gong practitioners
must stop immediately.
11) All detention facilities, including forced labour camps, must be opened for
international community inspection through the International Committee for the Red
Cross or other human rights or humanitarian organization.
12) Chinese hospitals should keep records of the source of every transplant. These
records should be available for inspection by international human rights officials.
13) Every organ transplant donor should consent to the donation in writing. These
consents should be available for inspection by international human rights officials.
14) China and every other state now party to the Convention against Torture, including
Canada, should accede to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture.
15) Every organ transplant, both donation and receipt, should have official approval
from a government supervisory agency before the transplant takes place.
16) Organ harvesting from executed prisoners should cease immediately.
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17) Commercialization of organ transplants should cease. Organ transplants should
not be for sale.
K. Commentary
To accept the first recommendation would mean accepting that the allegations are true.
All the other recommendations we make do not require accepting that the allegations
are true. We suggest adoption of these other recommendations in any case.
To accept the next three recommendations would mean giving at least some credence
to the allegations. The next three recommendations do not require accepting the
allegations as true; but they make sense only if there is a reasonable possibility the
allegations are true.
The remaining recommendations make sense and could be implemented whether the
allegations are true or false. The next five recommendations are addressed to the
international community, asking the community to promote respect within China of
international standards about organ transplants.
We are well aware that the Government of China denies the allegations. We suggest
that the most credible and effective way from the Government of China to assert that
denial is to implement all of the remaining recommendations in this report after the first
eight recommendations. If the remaining recommendations were implemented, the
allegations considered here could no longer be made.
To all those are sceptical about the allegations, we ask you to ask yourself what you
would suggest to prevent, in any state, allegations like these from becoming true. The
common sense list of precautions to prevent the sort of activity here alleged have
pretty much all been missing in China. Until the recent legislation was in force, many
basic precautions to prevent the abuses here alleged from happening were not in place.
That legislation does not fill the gap unless and until it is comprehensively
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implemented.
Every state, and not just China, needs to lay in its defences in order to prevent the
harvesting of organs from the unwilling, the marginalized, the defenceless. Whatever
one thinks of the allegations, and we reiterate we believe them to be true, China is
remarkably undefended to prevent the sorts of activities here alleged from happening.
There are many reasons why the death penalty is wrong. Not least is the densitization
of the executioners. When the state kills defenceless human beings already in detention
for their crimes, it becomes all too easy to take the next step, harvesting their organs
without their consent. This is a step China undoubtedly took. When the state harvests
the organs of executed prisoners without their consent, it is another step that becomes
all too easy and tempting to take to harvest the organs of other vilified, depersonalised,
defenceless prisoners without their consent, especially when there is big money to be
made from it. We urge the government of China, whatever they think of the allegations
considered here, to build up their defences against even the slightest possibility of the
harvesting of organs from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners.
All of which is respectfully submitted,
____________________ ____________________________________
David Matas David Kilgour
Ottawa 6 July 2006
Appendix 13
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APPENDICES 1-12 (are in a separate file at, http://OrganHarvestInvestigation.net or http://investigation.go.saveinter.net) APPENDIX 13 TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW
Interview with Ex-Wife of a Chinese Surgeon
Who Removed Corneas of Falun Gong Practitioners
On May 20, 2006, Mr. David Kilgour conducted an interview in the United States with the ex-wife of a Chinese surgeon who removed corneas of Falun Gong prisoners. The following transcript was abridged and edited to protect those who would otherwise be in danger due to publication of this interview. W – Ex-wife of a Chinese surgeon who removed corneas of Falun Gong practitioners. A – Another person who was also present at the interview and raised two questions. Kilgour: … The closest person who saw this happen is “W”. … In 2001, when did the procurement of food supplies for [Sujiatun Hospital] go up? W: About July, in the summer. Kilgour: July 2001. You were in the accounting department? W: Statistics and Logistics Department. Kilgour: Statistics and Logistics Department. What happened? The procurement of food went up first and then the surgical equipment? W: In July 2001, there were many people working in the Statistics and Logistics Department. Some of them from procurement brought the receipts to me for signature after they made the purchase. On the receipts I noted sharp increases in the food supplies. Also, the people in charge of the logistics were delivering meals to the facilities where Falun Gong practitioners were detained. Other medical staff came to our department to report the purchase of the medical equipment. From the receipts, the medical equipment supplies also sharply increased. Kilgour: By the way, the facilities to detain Falun Gong practitioners, was it the underground facilities? W: In the backyard of the hospital, there were some one-storey houses typically built for construction workers. After several months, the consumption of food and other
Appendix 13
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supplies gradually decreased. At that time people guessed that maybe the detainees were sent to an underground facility. Kilgour: When did the supply decrease? September? October? W: After about 4 or 5 months. Kilgour: End of 2001? W: Yes. Kilgour: How much of an increase did you estimate it was from the food [receipts you saw]? How many people you estimated were there? W: The person in charge of getting the food and in charge of sending food to Falun Gong practitioners detained told me that there were about 5,000 to 6,000 practitioners. At the time, a lot of public security bureaus and hospitals in many areas were detaining many Falun Gong practitioners. A lot of people working at the hospital, including me, were not Falun Gong practitioners. So we didn’t pay attention. If it were not for what happened in 2003, when I found my ex-husband was directly involved in it, I probably wouldn’t be interested in this at all. A lot of the staffers working in our department are family members of the officials in the government healthcare system. For some matters, we knew it in our hearts but none of us would discuss these things. Kilgour: When they decreased the procurement, where did you think the practitioners went? W: We thought they were released. Kilgour: At the end of 2001, you thought they were released? W: Yes. Kilgour: All 5,000 had been released? W: No, there were still Falun Gong practitioners detained in the hospital, but the number was gradually decreasing. Later, in 2003, I learned that Falun Gong practitioners had been transferred to the underground complex and other hospitals, because our hospital couldn’t hold so many people. Kilgour: They left the houses or cabins in the backyard to go to underground? W: Yes, I later got to know this in 2002.
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Kilgour: Did you say that you were not the person to send food to them when practitioners were detained in the houses or cabins in the backyard? W: No, I was not. Kilgour: Did you know who supplied their meals after they left your jurisdiction? W: I didn’t know. Kilgour: I heard a lot of these people were killed for their organs. 2001 and 2002. Was it the correct understanding? W: During the years of 2001–2002, I didn’t know anything about organ harvesting. I only knew the detention of these people. Kilgour: So you didn’t discover this until you husband told you in 2003. W: Right. Kilgour: Did he tell you that in 2001–2002 he had already started doing these operations? W: Yes, he started in 2002. Kilgour: Your former husband began in 2002? W: Yes. Kilgour: Did you roughly know if there were [organ removal] operations since 2001? W: The operations started in 2001. Some were done in our hospital, and some were done at other hospitals in the region. I found out in 2003. At the beginning he also did the operations, but he did not know they were Falun Gong practitioners. He was a neurosurgeon. He removed corneas. Starting from 2002 he got to know those he operated on were Falun Gong practitioners. Because our hospital was not an organ transplant hospital—it was only in charge of removal—how these organs were transplanted, he didn’t know. Kilgour: Your ex-husband started to take organs from Falun Gong practitioners starting from when? W: At the end of 2001, he started to operate, but he didn’t know these live bodies were Falun Gong practitioners. He got to know that in 2002.
Appendix 13
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Kilgour: What kind of organs did he take out? W: Corneas. Kilgour: Just corneas? W: Yes. Kilgour: Were these people alive or dead? W: Usually these Falun Gong practitioners were injected with a shot to cause heart failure. During the process these people would be pushed into operation rooms to have their organs removed. On the surface the heart stopped beating, but the brain was still functioning, because of that shot. Kilgour: What was the injection called? W: I don’t know the name of it but it caused heart failure. I was not a nurse or a doctor. I don’t know the names of the injections. Kilgour: Causing heart failure, most, or all, or some cases? W: For most people. Kilgour: So he would take corneas of these people, then what happened to these people? W: These people were pushed to other operation rooms for removals of heart, liver, kidneys, etc. During one operation when he collaborated with other doctors, he learned they were Falun Gong practitioners, that their organs were removed while alive, and that it was not just cornea removal—they were removing many organs. Kilgour: They did it in different rooms, didn’t they? W: In the later period of time, when these doctors cooperated together, they started doing the operations together. At the beginning, fearing information could leak out, different organs were removed by different doctors in different rooms. Later on, when they got money, they were no longer afraid anymore. They started to remove the organs together. For other practitioners who were operated on in other hospitals, my ex-husband didn’t know what happened to them afterwards. For the practitioners in our hospital, after their kidneys, liver, etc. and skin were removed, there were only bones and flesh, etc.
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left. The bodies were thrown into the boiler room at the hospital. In the beginning, I did not fully believe this had happened. For some doctors who had operation accidents, they may form some illusions. So I checked with other doctors and other officials from the government healthcare system. Kilgour: In 2003 or 2002? W: 2003. Kilgour: Your husband only did corneas? W: Yes. Kilgour: How many cornea operations did your ex-husband perform? W: He said about 2,000. Kilgour: Corneas of 2,000 people, or 2,000 corneas? W: Corneas of around 2,000 people. Kilgour: This is from 2001 to 2003? W: From the end of 2001 to October 2003. Kilgour: That was when he left? W: It was the time that I got to know this and he stopped doing it. Kilgour: Where did these corneas go? W: They were usually collected by other hospitals. There was an existing system handling such business of the removal and sales of the organs to other hospitals or other areas. Kilgour: Nearby or far away? W: I don’t know. Kilgour: All the heart, liver, kidneys, and corneas go off to other hospitals? W: Yes.
Appendix 13
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Kilgour: Did you know what prices they sold them for? W: I don’t know at the time. However, in the year 2002, a neighbour had a liver transplant. It cost 200,000 yuan. The hospital charged a little bit less for Chinese than foreigners. Kilgour: Which year, 2001 or 2002? W: 2002. Kilgour: What was your husband told? How did they justify? These were perfectly healthy people… W: In the beginning, he wasn’t told anything. He was asked to help out in other hospitals. However, every time when he did such a favour, or provided this kind of help, he got lots of money, and cash awards—several dozen times his normal salary. Kilgour: What was the total amount of money he got out of the 2,000 cornea removals? W: Hundreds of thousands of US dollars. Kilgour: Were they paid in US dollars? W: Paid in Chinese yuan. Equivalent to hundreds of thousands of US dollars. Kilgour: How many doctors were working on these organ removals in the hospital, and in which area? Are we talking about 100 doctors, or dozens, or 10? W: I don’t know how many people were doing it specifically. But I know that about four or five doctors who were acquaintances of us at our hospital were doing it. And in other hospitals, doctors of general practice were also doing this. Kilgour: Are there any records in the statistics department regarding how many people were operated upon? W: There was no proper procedure or paperwork for this kind of operation. So there was no way to count the number of operations in the normal way. Kilgour: After practitioners transferred underground at the end of 2001, did you know where their food supplies were from? W: Food still came from our department; just the amount gradually decreased. At the end of 2001 we thought they were released. In 2003, I learned that they were not released but were transferred underground or to other hospitals.
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Kilgour: Was the underground facility run by the military army or by the hospital? You said food was still from the hospital. W: We weren’t responsible for the procurement of the food for the people detained and kept underground. That is why there was so much difference in the procurement of food when people were transferred to the underground complex. But the food of some of the detainees was provided by the hospital, and for others it was not. The decrease in food was not proportional to the decrease in the number of detainees. Kilgour: What did your husband tell you about the underground facility? 5,000 people killed, or more than 5,000? W: He didn’t know how many people were detained underground. He only heard from some others that people were detained underground. If three operations were done every day, after several years of operation, for the 5,000–6,000 people, not many people would be left. This whole scheme and the trading of organs were organized by the government healthcare system. The doctors’ responsibility was simply to do what they were told to do. Kilgour: He didn’t go down to the underground facility himself? W: He didn’t. Kilgour: Rudimentary operation in the underground facility? W: He had never been there. Kilgour: All of those people, were they dead when they were operated on? Or their hearts stopped? Did he know that they were killed afterwards? They weren’t yet dead. W: At the beginning, he didn’t know these were Falun Gong practitioners. As time went by, he knew they were Falun Gong practitioners. When they did more of these removals of organs and became bold, these doctors started to do the removals together; this doctor extracted the cornea, another doctor removed the kidney, the third doctor took out the liver. At that time, this patient, or this Falun Gong practitioner, he knew what was the next step to treat the body. (Translator added the translation of the two missed sentences: Yes, the heart stopped beating, but they were still living.) If the victim’s skin was not peeled off and only internal organs were removed, the openings of the bodies would be sealed and an agent would sign the paperwork. The bodies would be sent to the crematorium near the Sujiatun area. Kilgour: Only if the skin was removed, they would be sent to the boiler room?
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W: Yes. Kilgour: Usually what was the “supposed” cause of death given? W: Usually no specific reason when the bodies were sent to the crematorium. Usually the reasons were “The heart stopped beating”, “heart failure”. When these people were rounded up and detained, nobody knew their names or where they were from. So when they were sent to the crematorium, nobody could claim their bodies. Kilgour: Who administered the drug to cause the heart to stop beating? W: Nurse. Kilgour: Nurse working for the hospital? W: Nurses brought over by these doctors. Doctors, including my ex-husband, came to this hospital in 1999 or 2000. He brought his nurse over. When organ harvesting first started, nurses were assigned to the doctors. Wherever the doctors go, their nurses go with them as far as the organ removal operations were concerned. These nurses were not like personal secretaries. In the year 2003, government health authorities sent many doctors involved in organ removal operations to an area sealed by the government because of SARS. These doctors believed they were sent there to let them live or die over there. I mean the government already wanted to put to death secretively the first group involved in organ removal. So they sent them to a SARS-affected area in Beijing. From that point on my husband realized that there was danger in doing this and that at any time, he could be killed and done away with as an accomplice. Later, when he wanted to quit, someone did try to kill him. Kilgour: In the hospital? W: Outside the hospital. Kilgour: Can you give us more details? W: At the end of 2003, after I learned about the issue, he came back from Beijing. He could no longer live a normal life. After I knew about it, he listened to my advice and decided to quit doing it. He submitted his resignation letter. It was around the new year of 2004. In February 2004, after his resignation was granted, the last month of working in the hospital, he was tying up loose ends at his work. During that time we received phone
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threats at home. Someone said to him, “You watch out for your life.” One day we got off work in the afternoon. There were two people walking toward us trying to assassinate him. If you were a woman, I would show you my scar, because I pushed him aside and took the stab. Men do not have very good sixth senses, so he kept walking. When I realized the two people were going to pull the knife to stab him, I pushed him aside and took the stab for him. Many people came over and I was sent to the hospital. These two men ran away. Kilgour: Which side? (Location of the scar) W: Right side. Kilgour: Do you know who these two people were? W: I didn’t know in the beginning. Later I knew. Kilgour: Who were they? W: I learned that they were thugs hired by the government health authorities. Kilgour: How did you find that out about these two? W: Because my family was part of the government healthcare system. My mother used to be a doctor. After these things happened, our friends suggested we get a divorce so it would separate our children and me from my husband. After all, our children and I didn’t participate in any of these things. So we divorced at the end of 2003, very close to the new year of 2004. Kilgour: How many did you think were still alive? W: Initially I estimated there were about 2,000 people left at the time I left China in 2004. But I cannot give a figure anymore, because China is still arresting Falun Gong practitioners and there have been people coming in and going out. So I cannot give a figure now anymore. Kilgour: How did you come to this number 2,000 in 2004? W: According to how many my ex-husband did and how many other doctors did. And how many sent to other hospitals. Good doctors are well connected within the healthcare system. Many of them used to be classmates in medical schools. The number was estimated by the few doctors involved. When we were together in private,
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they discussed how many people in total. At that time, these doctors did not want to continue. They wanted to go to other countries or transfer to other fields. So the total number of deaths was calculated and derived by these doctors involved. Kilgour: What is their estimate of how many people were killed? W: They estimated 3,000–4,000 people. Kilgour: This is the estimate by all of the doctors? W: No. By three doctors we were familiar with. Kilgour: Do you have anything else you want to say? W: Chinese or non-Chinese, they think it is impossible Sujiatun detained so many Falun Gong practitioners. They focused on just this Sujiatun hospital. Because most people do not know there are underground facilities. I want to say, even if things were over for Sujiatun, in other hospitals this issue continues. Because I worked in Sujiatun, I know about Sujiatun. Other hospitals and detention centres… inspecting and putting control on these facilities will help reduce the deaths. For Chinese people, one person comes out, there are still family members in China. They still dare not come out to speak the truth. They are afraid it could put their family members in danger. It doesn’t mean that they don’t know about it. A: Does your mother know about what you are doing? W: Yes. A: Does she still work in the government healthcare system? W: No. She retired a long time ago. She is almost 70 years old.
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APPENDIX 14 TRANSCRIPT OF TELEPHONE INVESTIGATIONS (1) Mijiang City Detention Centre, Heilongjiang province (8 June 2006): M: Do you have Falun Gong [organ] suppliers? ... Mr. Li: We used to have, yes. M: … what about now? Mr. Li: … Yes. …… M: Can we come to select, or you provide directly to us? Mr. Li: We provide them to you. M: What about the price? Mr. Li: We discuss after you come. …… M: How many [Falun Gong suppliers] under age 40 do you have? Mr. Li: Quite a few. …… M: Are they male or female? Mr. Li: Male …… M: Now, for … the male Falun Gong [prisoners], how many of them do you have? Mr. Li: Seven, eight, we have [at least] five, six now. M: Are they from countryside or from the city? Mr. Li: Countryside. (2) Shanghai’s Zhongshan Hospital Organ Transplant Clinic (16 March 2006):
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M: Hi. Are you a doctor? Doctor: Yes, I am… …… M: … So how long do I have to wait [for organ transplant surgery]? Doctor: About a week after you come… M: Is there the kind of organs that come from Falun Gong? I heard that they are very good. Doctor: All of ours are those types. (3) Qianfoshan City Liver Transplant Hospital, Shandong province (16 March 2006): Receptionist: Hold a second. I’ll get a doctor for you. Doctor: Hello. How are you? M: … How long have you been doing [these operations]?… Doctor: … Over four years. … M: The supply of livers… the ones from Falun Gong, I want to ask if you have those types? Doctor: It is ok if you come here. M: So that means you have them? Doctor: … In April, there will be more of these kinds of suppliers… now, gradually, we have more and more.” M: Why will there be more in April? Doctor: This I can’t explain to you… (4) Nanning City Minzu Hospital in Guangxi Autonomous Region (22 May 2006): M: Could you find organs from Falun Gong practitioners?
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Dr. Lu: Let me tell you, we have no way to get [them]. It’s rather difficult to get it now in Guangxi. If you cannot wait, I suggest you go to Guangzhou because it’s very easy for them to get the organs. They are able to look for them nationwide. As they are performing the liver transplant, they can get the kidney for you at the same time, so it’s very easy for them to do. Many places where supplies are short go to them for help. …… M: Why is it easy for them to get?... Lu: Because they are an important institution. They contact the judicial system in the name of the whole university. M: Then they use organs from Falun Gong practitioners? Lu: Correct… …… M: … What you used before [organs from Falun Gong practitioners], were they from detention centre(s) or prison(s)?” Lu: From prisons. M: … And it was from healthy Falun Gong practitioners…? Lu: Correct. We would choose the good ones because we assure the quality in our operation. M: That means you choose the organs yourself. Lu: Correct... …… M: Usually, how old is the organ supplier? Lu: Usually in their thirties. M: … Then you will go to the prison to select yourself? Lu: Correct. We must select it.
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M: What if the chosen one doesn’t want to have blood drawn? Lu: He will for sure let us do it. M: How? Lu: They will for sure find a way. What do you worry about? These kinds of things should not be of any concern to you. They have their procedures. M: Does the person know that his organ will be removed? Lu: No, he doesn’t. (5) Shanghai Jiaotong University Hospital’s Liver Transplant Centre (16 March 2006): M: I want to know how long [the patients] have to wait [for a liver transplant]. Dr. Dai: The supply of organs we have, we have every day. We do them every day. M: We want fresh, alive ones. Dr. Dai: They are all alive, all alive… M: How many [liver transplants] have you done? Dr. Dai: We have done 400 to 500 cases… Your major job is to come, prepare the money, enough money, and come. M: How much is it? Dr. Dai: If everything goes smoothly, it’s about RMB 150,000… RMB 200,000. M: How long do I have to wait? Dr. Dai: I need to check your blood type… If you come today, I may do it for you within one week. M: I heard some come from those who practise Falun Gong, those who are very healthy. Dr. Dai: Yes, we have. I can’t talk clearly to you over the phone. M: If you can find me this type, I am coming very soon.
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Dr. Dai: It’s ok. Please come. M: … What is your last name?... Dr. Dai: I’m Doctor Dai. (6) Zhengzhou Medical University Organ Transplant Centre in Henan Province (14 March 2006): Dr. Wang: … For sure, [the organ] is healthy… If it’s not healthy, we won’t take it. M: I’ve heard that those kidneys from Falun Gong practitioners are better. Do you have them? Wang: Yes, yes, we pick all young and healthy kidneys… M: That is the kind that practises this type of [Falun] Gong. Wang: For this, you could rest assured. Sorry I can’t tell you much on the phone. M: Do you get [them] out of town? Wang: … We have local ones and out-of-town ones. …… M: What is your last name? Wang: Wang. (7) Oriental Organ Transplant Center (also called Tianjin City No. 1 Central Hospital), Tianjin City, (15 March 2006): N: Is this Chief Physician Song? Song: Yes, please speak. …… N: Her doctor told her that the kidney is quite good because he [the supplier] practises … Falun Gong. Song: Of course. We have all those who breathe and with heartbeat… Up until now,
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for this year, we have more than ten kidneys, more than ten such kidneys. N: More than ten of this kind of kidneys? You mean live bodies? Song: Yes, it is so. (8) Tongji Hospital in Wuhan City, Wuhan City, Hubei Province (30 March 2006): N: How many [kidney transplants] can you do in a year? Official: … Our department is the one that does the most in the whole Hubei province. We do a lot if the organ suppliers are ample. N: … We hope the kidney suppliers are alive. [We’re] looking for live organ transplants from prisoners, for example, using living bodies from prisoners who practise Falun Gong. Is it possible? Official: It’s not a problem. (9) General Hospital of Guangzhou Military Region, Guangdong Province (12 April 2006): N: Is this Dr. Zhu…? Zhu: Yes, that’s me. N: I’m from hospital 304. … I have two relatives in hospital 304. We don’t have enough kidney supply right now. We did a lot of [kidney transplants] in 2001, 2002, and 2003… Zhu: Right… N: We found that kidneys from young people and Falun Gong [practitioners] are better. How about your hospital, such as kidneys from Falun Gong? Zhu: We have very few kidneys from Falun Gong. N: But you still have some? Zhu: It is not hard for [blood] type B. If you come here, we can arrange it quickly, definitely before May 1. N: There will be a batch before May 1?
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Zhu: Several batches. N: Will you have some after May 1? Zhu: After May 1, you may need to wait until May 20 or later. …… (10) First Detention Centre of Qinhuangdao city, Hebei Province (18 May 2006): N: Is this the First Detention Centre of Qinhuangdao City? Official: What’s up? N: We are doing kidney transplantations and we don’t have enough organs. Official: You don’t need to call here. You just call the court. N: Which court? Official: It is the Intermediate People’s Court. You need to tell them about such thing. N: In 2001, you provided live organs from young and healthy people who practised Falun Gong… Official: You don’t need to talk about that time. It has been so many years. Right now it is with the court. You just call them. (11) The Second Detention Centre of Qinhuangdao city Hebei Province (18 May 2006): …… N: … I wonder whether you still have live organ supplies from people such as those practising Falun Gong? Official: No, we don’t have Falun Gong [organs] right now. There are very few people—almost none. During earlier 2000s there [were] many Falun Gong [organs]. …… (12) The Qinhuangdao Intermediate People’s Court Hebei Province (18 May 2006):
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…… N: … Can your court provide us with some live kidneys from young and healthy people? Official: No matter good or bad, we have none. There is no execution after the Spring festival… N: … I mean live kidneys from young and healthy people who practise Falun Gong. You had a lot in 2001… Official: We had before… N: … Not just the executed prisoners—such live organs as Falun Gong…? Official: No, what you said is in 2001. We have to face reality now… …… (13) The First Criminal Bureau of the Jinzhou Intermediate People’s Court (23 May 2006): N: Starting from 2001, we always [got] kidneys from young and healthy people who practise Falun Gong from detention centres and courts… I wonder if you still have such organs in your court right now? Official: That depends on your qualifications… If you have good qualifications, we may still provide some… N: Are we supposed to get them, or will you prepare for them?” Official: According to past experience, it is you that will come here to get them. N: … What are the qualifications that we must have? Official: … Let’s say for now this year is very different from previous years. This year the situation is very tough… The policy is very strict. Several years ago we had a good relationship with Beijing, but recently it is very tense… It’s all about mutual benefits… (14) Kunming Higher People’s Court (31 May 2006): N: … We contacted your court several times in 2001. Your court can provide us with those live kidney organs from those young and healthy Falun Gong practitioners…?
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Official: I am not sure about that. Such things are related to national secrets. I don’t think this is something that we can talk about on the phone. If you want to know more information about these things, you’d better contact us in a formal way, okay?
